


Cold Blood

by chihiros



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Introspection, Self-Esteem Issues, arthur killin a feller and dutch bein a prick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 20:15:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18698404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chihiros/pseuds/chihiros
Summary: Arthur kills a man in cold blood that night on the Adler ranch.





	Cold Blood

**Author's Note:**

> on my second playthrough i killed the guy in the stable at the beginning and it gave me......feelings, unfortunately

Arthur kills a man in cold blood that night on the Adler ranch. It’s no different from any other time he’s squeezed the life out of a man, not really; feller makes the same choked noises as all suffocating men do. After his corpse goes pale and cold like a fish outta water, Arthur feels no sudden rush of remorse. Nothing special at all.

“Want me to kill him?” Arthur had said.

“No, not yet,” Dutch replied, careful, slow, like he was tasting the words and their weight. Arthur, obedient, fist in the O’Driscoll’s collar and knuckles already bloody. A loyal dog before a cut of meat, seeking permission to eat but glad to starve if the order never came.

He beat the man first. Didn’t flinch as his fist crunched against cheekbones, cracked against a temple, pulled wet, bloody squelches out of a mouth as he pulped the flesh with each hard blow. Maybe he showed off a bit, incessantly aware of Dutch’s heavy gaze on him and lavishing under the attention. He felt strong. Felt like he was doing good, being everything Dutch wanted him to be—raised him to be—and more.

Dutch watched him the way a stable master watches a prize stud, dark eyes giving away little, but Arthur saw all he needed in the small upwards curl at the corners of his lips. The half-interested tilt of his head, sideways, like the scene of Arthur on his knees in the hay and shit and blood was a fine painting in a city gallery. One hand hooked in his belt, the other bringing a cigarette to his lips, leisurely like. Smoke clouding his head like a halo, or a shroud.

After the fifth or sixth blow, Dutch chuckles lowly. He sounds like how coffee tastes, the rich, unadulterated stuff Arthur rarely cares for. “Well, I would say it looks like you have this, Arthur. Do what you want with him. I don’t care.”

With that, Dutch wanders off back to the house, but Arthur would be a fool to think the show’s over. The implication’s there, in Dutch’s words, like metal sunk to the bottom of a creek.

It’s best, Arthur thinks, that Dutch makes it sound like a choice and Arthur’s doing all the choosing. Keep’s Dutch’s hands clean and Arthur’s bloody, as they should be. It’s all they’re good for, after all.

The problem with that, ‘course, is it makes the sorry bastard under Arthur think he has a chance.

“Please,” he begs, quivering like a lamb. He can barely speak around his bloody tongue and missing teeth. Empty gums and bruises is all he is now, all Arthur turned him to. “I don’t know anything else—“

He’s got that hoarse, breaking quality to his voice that comes with desperation, with true, wretched terror, a voice Arthur knows better than his own. 

“—please, please, spare me, I promise you won’t see me ag—“

No reason in letting him go on. His throat feels thin under Arthur’s brutish hands, easily encircled in his grip. He sees wide eyes, a mouth moving in soundless shapes, hands scrambling and nails digging in. A neck, exposed, soft and easily crushed. Arthur wrings the life from it like a rag.

He stoops to collect his gun from where it clattered to the floor, bones creaking from the cold and spine stiff from something else. Picks up his hat next, doesn’t bother dusting off the loose hay before replacing it to his head. The corpse’s eyes are still open.

The only horse in the stable is wary of him, can probably smell the blood, knows he’s a killer. It rears, whinnies, dances on its hooves as Arthur slowly approaches. He gets blood in its mane when he reaches out to soothe it.

When he emerges back into the snow, the spooked horse’s reins clutched tight in his bruised fist, Dutch is waiting for him. His expression is pleased, approving; he must’ve seen that no figure left the barn; must know that Arthur did the right thing, what Dutch needed from him, as he always knew he would.

**Author's Note:**

> i want to write so much for these cowpokes but its slow going :( plus i am just very bad at writing, please do bear with me
> 
> kudos and comments make my life like ten times better!!!


End file.
